The Eagle in the Dragon's Roost

my last post

2007-01-02T02:39:00.000-08:00

well guys, my time in china has come to an end. i have to say that overall, it was an incredible experience. while my grades are hardly worth noting, looking back, i will greatly appreciate this once in a lifetime opportunity to really immerse myself in such a foreign culture that allowed me to see some really great things and meet some really great people. nevertheless, there is no place like home and i am happy to be back.

hope you all enjoyed the travel tales.

tuning out,
leo

(yes, i realize sayonara is japanese)

maccau, beijing, and the great wall

2007-01-02T02:19:00.000-08:00

here is am with sam in hong kong just before our visit to maccau and beijing. we are wearing matching columbia jackets that we purchased for $10. not bad at all....

a nice pan of a bay at maccau. off in the distance are some of the more expensive homes owned by the casino operators im told.

cathedral of saint something or the other at maccau. it was pretty cool

back in beijing, i am standing on a bridge at this nice park next to the forbidden city. usually there is water but they drained it to prevent freezing.

here is a picture i like of my mom standing at the top of a bridge.

there were some cute little kids waving flags running around, and so i took a picture.
here i am with sam and my cousin at one of the old gates to the city of beijing. there are several of these around.

in the center of tienamen square, there is the tomb of mao. i am standing at its southern side, saluting mighty china. i dont know how pleased the guards were about this, but im sure that if they took one step away from their post there would be some serious explaining to do...

here are sam, my cousin, and grace (my buddy who was an incredible guide in china)

this is one of my favorite pics of my mom, standing alone in one of the main squares of the forbidden city. click to enlarge.

here i am with my mom in front of a cool tree at the forbidden city. there are a lot of beautiful old tress in china.

pic of me at the great wall. this place was really awe inspiring. here i am about to roll all the way down. look at how far it goes into the horizon? amazing eh?

summer palace and restaurant

2007-01-02T01:54:00.000-08:00

these are some pics of me, family and friends at the summer palace. it was soooo damn cold that day but we still had a great time. last are pics at the greatest duck restaurant in the world...

this is a cool picture of my cousin, grace, sam and myself in that order from left to right.

here i am with grace at the lake of the summer palace, built by an empress of china who stole the money reserved to build a navy for the dynasty. haha

here is a nice little panoramic of the lake at the summer palace. a man made lake, workers were forced to dig it out of the ground with their bare hands. off into the distance in into the right, there is a mountain with a tower on top of it (cant see it in this pic). that mountain was created by the earth uncovered in this project. did you notice you can see my cousin in three places?

here i am at dinner as grace is trying to strangle me to death. at this moment, my eyes began to roll back into my head, the life slowly draining from my skin as my lungs tried desperately in vain for one last gulp of fresh air....

here i am eating the most amazing duck ive ever had in my life at a place called "emperor duck". it was so fresh, so crisp, so tasty.... i miss it. (p.s. the tacky sweater is on because beijing was freezing cold cindy).

pics of my new crew and me...

2006-11-21T01:10:00.000-08:00

the newest membor of my clan. his name is leondardo. raphael, michaelangelo & donatello are his companians... see below pic.

hehe these guys are cute. ive got some good vids of them (you cant see all of them in this pic). will consider posting online..

every time i look at this i laugh at myself (i find that i do that more and more each day). im eating one of my favorite desserts, mango sago. sago apparently is like tapioka (sp). who kows, but its damn good...

another weird pic of me. i like this one because it makes me look like a mad scientist. that kid in the back lives on my floor, he is a great guy...

here i am taking a sip of some water coming down like a waterfall. albeit a very small water fall. and no, i didnt think it was gross or that i would die of some random disease...

2006-11-20T15:17:00.000-08:00

here are some random pics of me all over the place. more will come....

here i am sticking my face against this water sculpture at the top of this gigantic escalator.

here are some palm treees at the avenue of stars. from here you can view the hong kong skyline... there is also the handprint of jacqui chan and a statue of bruce lee (who was from hong kong)...

a picture of the hong kong skyline by vantage of the harbor ferry...

this is quite possibly the most amazing food ive discovered here in hong kong. dont know what its called, but it is a "rice ball" stuffed with chilled mango, and coconut shreddings on the side...

the buddha of lantau

2006-11-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

here are statues honoring his holiness, the buddha.. .

here is a pic of the buddha at lantau. the worldest largest statue to buddha in bronze (largest bronze statue perhaps? not quite sure..) its really much bigger than it looks in this pic....

here is the buddha off into the distance. it looks huge doesnt it?

here i am standing on the steps leading up to the buddha, in my failed attempt to seem like im pointing up to it...

me on my balcony

2006-11-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

guess who's back?

2006-11-09T15:18:00.000-08:00

me. sorry for my leave of absence, but i am back in black, and ready to roll with updated pics and videos.

Episode 13: Shenanigans at Wanchai

2006-09-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

last friday a friend of my brother's here in hong kong was nice enough to meet up with me and show me around the city at night. he also introduced me to some of his friends, who were all really cool people. here are some pictures.

here we are at a bar with billy's (guy in black shirt) cute girlfriend. funny story about her. so we were all sitting down, and everyone asked her to guess my age (billy promised her $1000HK if she got it right). naturally, she assumed that i must have been older than i looked, as opposed to as young as i look. she guessed 40. 40!?!!??!?!?!! am i that old? i would have been the oldest guy at the table.... haha it was still a good laugh.

here go me paul and ceedee. paul looks like he is crazy, but he is actually a calm guy. perhaps it is the other way around actually. he is probably crazy, but acts calm until it slowly comes out. i like that much better.

here is a little bit of flasiness of a street at wanchai at night.

here we all are at a romantic little place at the peak (remember, with the fantastic view?) from left to right: ceedee, billy, (forget her name, she is kevin's gf), kevin, and paul. everyone but ceedee works as industrial designers.

Episode 12: epilogue at the beach

2006-09-20T05:28:00.000-07:00

Episode 12: sai kung and the beach

2006-09-19T21:31:00.000-07:00

on sunday (yes i realize i am a few days late posting these) i went back to sai kung with my expedition crew: danny and tamara, and we visited an island not too far from there. we rented a boat for $3. once there, we hiked around the island, across miles of uneven rock terrain, for two hours, until we found a great little spot on the beach to chill. best part of the day was the dessert for dinner. check out the pics.

is if it doesnt rain enough in this place (almost 4x a week) a lot of the people here in hong kong walk around with umbrellas to shade themselves from the sun. here we are on the pier of sai kung, where people are crowding on the edge, what for i wonder?

for fish! so these guys park under the pier with their boats filled with fish of all types, and hustle them to the public. another one of those things you dont exactly find in the US. the entire pier is lined up with them.

this was the ferry we took to an island off of the coast of sai kung. it is the island directly across the bay at my school. our boatman was great...

actually he was the boatman on the way back, but that makes no difference to you guys.

as we sailed across the bay approaching our island i felt strangely similar to francisco pizarro as he sailed into the new world to confront the incas...

this island off of the coast of sai kung had some really pretty rock and coral formations. even the color of the water was nice. but it had this funny smell to it...

here i go diggin a hole in the sand to help danny.

this is my bruce lee pose. if anyone makes any comments about me being malnurited, i am goin to karate chop your head off...

who is this guy chillin on the rocks with the world behind him?

and so the day ends with another beautiful sunset. off into the distance is my school....

but not without some dessert. we had a mango fest, with mango sago on the far left, mango with black "glutonous" rice and vanilla creame, mango cakes on the bottom, and a mango ice at the top. all of this was delicious (evan i think you would have really enjoyed it).

Episode 11: visit to Wan Chai

2006-09-16T02:19:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went to wan chai, a stop on hong kong island just before central. a lot of the buildings you see in the skyline are around here. i mainly walked down gloucester rd, a broadway of sorts, that is an artery of transportation through the center of hong kong. but first, i encountered a little baby...

look at this little rugrat. cute aint it? i thought she was, so i went up to her to make a few faces, get her to smile.

instead, i got this face. we stared at eachother, for maybe a whole minute. her expression didnt change, she didnt bat an eye, she just lifted her head and met my gaze. she is going to grow up to be a man eater one day....

this is gloucester road, a broadway equivalent that runs through the heart of hong kong city. keep going down a couple of miles and youll get to central and the governer's former palace (back when this was a part of the british empire).

the opposite view of gloucester. there's traffic anywhere you go. that bus just cut somebody off.

next door to the government immigration building on gloucester rd is thi slittle park. though tiny compared to washington square park, it was still a nice change from the city atmosphere above. in the distance you can see the world financial center, the tallest building in hong kong.

like some cities we know, hong kong has tons of taxis. here, they are color coded as red and green, one goes to the new territories, the other stays in hong kong island (i think).

Episode 10: singing in the dorm

2006-09-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

Episode 9: epilogue, live at the fish market

2006-09-09T02:05:00.000-07:00

Episode 9: nothing special

2006-09-09T01:36:00.000-07:00

pics arent too special today as i went to choi hung, a town the HKUST bus drops me off at in order to ride the MTR into mong kok. i had to buy a new keyboard today and now i have one of those chinese ones with all the characters. cost me 6 dollars, and its silent.... not a bad deal.

this surprised me when i saw it. nintendo has made the gameboy micro, which essentially is an NES controller with a built in LCD screen that allows you to play old NES games. im tempted to buy one.

it rained today so everyone was running around with their umbrellas. here is a pic at the apple shop.... a clothing and jean store i believe.

i found this to be particularly strange. apparently someone here has found the market for model buses to be large enough to dedicate its own store at the mall to. i went inside and there were some pretty nice models, but still, buses?

i often take the bus to the choi hung station in order to hope on the MTR. there is a pretty large market for live and not so alive animals. this side of it was dedicated to poultry. notice all the baby ducks there on the table...

Strange names, part 1

2006-09-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

Tonight i met a kid whose english name is Analysis.

Episode 8: Some dorm shenanigans

2006-09-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

Episode 7: epilogue 2, HK from the water boat

2006-09-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Episode 7: epilogue, live from the peak

2006-09-02T20:16:00.000-07:00

Episode 7: the peak at mt Victoria, to central

2006-09-02T19:53:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went to the stanley market, an outdoor market where you can buy nice little nitnacks (this country is the most consumer oriented country in the world, malls are EVERYWHERE). afterwards we took our bus to the peak on top of victoria mountain. that is the beverly hills of hong kong where homes supposedly can cost $100million US (i am skeptical of this figure). still, it was beautiful and some of the homes were like chinese palaces (though i had no time to snap a photo on the driveby). afterwards i went to central.

this was my dim sum lunch that i had at the stanely market, a ritzy little area by the beach. dim sum is a type of chinese cuisine where they serve many small portions of food and you dabble in all of them. it was fantastic.

here are some of my favorite people at the exchange. one french canadian, two french, two austrians. all of whom are very fun... kid on the right, gp, will be in hong kong a whole year. i wish him the best of luck

here is a panoramic of hong kong by day. not a bad looking city if i say so myself...

here i am about to take flight into hong kong, until i thought better of it. there was a 20 foot drop from that ledge...

a panoramic of me at an observatory on the peak. i really liked this spot because of how hard the wind was blowing. we were on the opposite side of the mt so there was no view of the city really.

couple of hours later after it got dark, this is a gorgeous view of hong kong at night. from the top of the peak. every night at 8pm there is a light show which involves dozens of buildings that light up from top to bottom. it is best viewed from the kowloon side across the water.

i found this poor cow on display that was suffering from an identity crisis. my chinese name is xue hu, which means snow tiger. a lot of the mainland kids get a kick out of my name which often comes across to them as a childish one. i happen to like it very much.

here i am sucking on the utters of a greek cow...

some of you may or may not know that i have a thing for lions (leondari means lion in greek). here i am riding on at the HSBC building in central last night. i named him theodore.

this is me smiling in my artistic pose in black and white. the amazing 10 minute hong kong boat ferry ride was coming to an end....

by the end of the day i was dead tired, as you can see. this is danny on my left, he is from maryland.

Episode 6: epilogue, live from mong kok

2006-09-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

Episode 6: journey to mong kok

2006-09-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

like every adventure into the city, it begins with a wonderful little ride on a minibus. i especially enjoyed this one because of our little donkey companion on the dashboard. can you see the silhouette of the skyline in the horizon?

just look at all these people....

and here i go being a goof ball with our wonderful tour guide alfreida. the chinese kids here pick their western names for themselves. one, our coordinator, named herself olive. i asked how she got the name and she said "from the dictionary of course". the weirdest one to date has been a girl who called her self cinderella. im not even kidding....im waiting for one to name themselves carborator or transmission.

as some of you may know, squid is a favorite dish of mine. on the streets here you can buy a lot of really exotic food (including turtle killed right before your eyes... so sad). this wasnt particularly any good though since they dipped it in this weird sauce.

here is a snapshot of nathan ave. a really overpriced street in mong kok. i like the neon lights. this street is sorta like broadway (but not since they actually have a broad way). all the streets parallel to this one are virtually impossible to drive down since there are so many people about.

and here i go taking a snapshot of myself with the neon lights in the background on nathan ave. just look at that goofy smile.... in case youre wondering why i am always wearing a wife beater, this place is scorching hot and humid. i have to take two showers a day to ward of the sweat and stickiness.

Episode 5: hong hau adventure

2006-08-31T03:09:00.000-07:00

today i woke up, had lunch (which was terrible), then grabbed a minibus to the local village of hong hau (i think thats the name of it, ill have to check at some point to clarify). hong hau was cool, its small but very dense with these huge skyscraper condos and minimalls spread throughout. like most of the towns here, many buildings look somewhat delapidated (yet are starkly contrasted by ultra modern neighbors), but the streets are surprisingly clean.

first, a picture of my lunch. so far this has been the most unpleasant meal to date. it is "beef with sweet corn sauce". it wasnt necessarily that the taste was that bad but there was something about the texture that made me very uncomfortable eating it. i am going to leave it at that....

the best way to travel, when not traveling on the MTR subway, is with these little minibuses that hold about 12 people. hong kong has streamlined their public transportation system with something known as the octopus card, which is like the new blink debit card that you tap against a machine and it deducts from your balance. when riding the mtr, you tap once to enter, and once to leave and it deducts based on how far you traveled, hassel free. why we dont have this in NYC, i dont know.

there is nothing i enjoy more than seeing evidence of american corporate imperialism. here is a star bucks at the hong hau mall.

this i enjoyed immensely. because cars are coming from the opposite direction you may be used to, there are often friendly little reminders on the street to tell you which direction to look in order to avoid oncoming traffic. this particular one happened to have saved my life....

hong kong is riddled with these huge skyscraper condo communities. they often have minimalls at the base of them, and if they are close enough, these malls are connected with bridges that hang over the road.

and this is a darker closeup of one of these huge condos that riddle hong hau.

Episode 4: epilogue, my first double decker ride to Sai Kung

2006-08-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Episode 4: Sai Kung

2006-08-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

Sai Kung is a little town about 8km from my school. its on a river so there are a lot of fisheries there. our exchange group went to a thai restaurant for some peer bonding. here are a few pictures but nothing spectacular.

i am a little blurry in this pic, but i am standing under the Sai Kung arch. what i liked about this place was that the village was tiny, but neon flashing lights were everywhere.

here i am standing in front of one of a million seafood restaurants. i love the orange lanterns.

this is a picture of me taken to celebrate my very first ride on a double decker bus. i have to say it was quite a spectacular experience (who would have thought riding a bus would ever be that), but on a serious note, you do get a great view of everything from the second floor.

kids were playing basketball last night. the best thing about basketball is that it offers cities a lowcost solution to provide for its citizenry. soccer, football, hockey, and baseball are very demanding on space, but basketball only needs a court or even half of a court... hell just a net will do.

for those of you that think "cheers" exists only in Boston and Chicago (and a few other select american cities), feast your mind on the fact that sai kung has one too. the question is, which came first???

Episode 3: Epilogue, video of the landscape

2006-08-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Episode 3: the sunrise

2006-08-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

still being jetlagged, i often find myself up at 5 in the morning (to be honest, i havent made much effort to get over jet lag). i decided to revist my nice spot on the rocks and take pictures of the sunrise as i get to know my new camera. hope you enjoy.
this is a snapshot of the presunrise that is perhaps as beautiful as the sunrise. to some maybe even more so.

here is another snapshot of the presunrise, which almost resembles a sunset,
as i set on my rocks.

here is a panoramic that does absolutely no justice to my view.

remember to click on these pics to make them larger.

here i go obstructing our view of the sunrise.
notice how the flash relfects off of my face. i almost look like a ghost...

the sun is slowly making its way up but the clouds block its light.

an orange crescendo as the sun fights off nature's clouds

finally the sun has made it through the clouds.

Episode 2: the campus

2006-08-29T00:28:00.000-07:00

this is my building from afar, notice how close i am to the bay. its pretty beautiful even though i dont have a view of the water.

here is one of the cafeteries where i ate breakfast today. it was $2. rice noodle (a big one) that was stuffed with pork and topped with a weird soy type of sauce. it was pretty good.

this is a picture of the front entrance to our school with their signature sundial.

this is the main atrium of my school. all of the classes and hallways meet at this corridor.in the distance is the library which is pretty respectable. they have every hugo and nebula winner in their science fiction section.

this is the left side of my campus as seen from the main causeway. this place is like a jungle, pretty beautiful.

this is the right side of the causeway which you can see covered on the left side.

this is the fountain on the left side. there are alot of grass fields where you can play ball or picnic.

this is one of the main causeways that you walk down to get from the top of campus to the very bottom. the school is built on a cliff, so the school is layered in terraces.

here is a picture of the pool from afar.the temperature is perfect. it has a high and low dive.

and finally a closeup of the pool. that is all of the campus for now...

Episode 1: my dorm

2006-08-29T00:18:00.000-07:00

this is a picture of my dorm from the street level. unfotunately, my room doesnt face this side which has a view of the bay, but the back,which faces the cliff wall.

this is my hallway. it is an all boys hall way, my door is number 001, first one on the right.

this is my bedroom. considerably smaller than my room at NYU. my bed and desk are on the right, my roommate TJ's are on the left. notice how clean my section is...

this is a picture of my shared bathroom. notice the urinals on the left, for some reason water consistently runs in them. seems like a waste

this is my shared kitchen. kind of a mess, but at least we have a communal rice cooker. eating out at the cafeteria costs $2-3 a meal.

this is the common room. as you can see, this place is very much like a traditional dorm.